If you want to grow your business, find solutions to your business issues, AND help people in need (both globally and domestically), then listen to our latest Convene podcast with Larry Noble, National Director, Corporate Engagement, and Greg Leith, CEO, Convene to find out how!
Coming from a business-owners mindset, the World Vision Corporate Engagement Team will walk alongside you to help find answers to some aspects of your business that ‘keep you up at night.’ These aspects include building a stronger brand, what to do with downfall / excess product / lack of warehouse space, employee engagement (increasing employee loyalty and retention), and – cause marketing (a proven way to increase sales and attract customers).
World Vision’s Corporate Engagement Team works with companies of all sizes, within all industries, to create solutions that align with your company goals and missions in unique, impactful ways.
Now, learn more about what World Vision can do for you and your company – all while helping the most vulnerable of our citizens.
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Watch the episode here
Listen to the podcast here
Impacting The Most Vulnerable Through Corporate Partnership With Larry Noble
Unveiling World Vision’s Corporate Engagement: A New Era of Impact
Larry Noble, thank you for joining us from Seattle at the World Vision Headquarters. We’re excited to spend some time together.
It’s my pleasure to be here, Greg. I’m looking forward to this conversation.
I am, too. Larry is the National Director and Corporate Engagement for World Vision. He’s also a visiting professor at the Keller Graduate School of Management and spent a lot of time in the hotel industry. Larry, I am so excited about this episode because I have talked to scores of people about what we’re doing with World Vision and singularly, what you’re doing at World Vision. No one yet has said, “I’m aware of that.” We’re about to make a lot of people aware of something that’s exciting.
We’re trying to get that word out, Greg. This is great to do.
Apparently, about 90% of World Vision’s operating expenses are used for things that everybody’s aware of like children, families, communities and water. There’s a new way for companies to engage and it’s going to be delightful for CEOs to hear about. It’s called Corporate Engagement. Tell us about it.
Corporate engagement has been around World Vision for many years. I joined World Vision many years ago, coming from 30 years plus in the corporate sector. Once I joined, I’m putting myself back in the seats of the corporate executive and what was I looking for in an engagement with an international non-profit like World Vision? We, together as a team, came together and said, “Our real role in this world, our role with World Vision and with our corporate donors is how we engage corporate donors in a way that benefits their business.” It also allows us to continue to do the superb work that World Vision does in over 100 countries, including the United States.
Out of that, we developed a business solutions platform where we come alongside companies of all sizes, all stripes, basically all industry sectors to provide solutions to help them build their business, help them relieve their reverse logistics concerns, overcrowding of warehouse space, downfall product, excess inventory and helping them build their brand among their stakeholders, employees, shareholders, vendors and the community at large. We developed this program just to do that, to come alongside corporations, understand and ascertain what their issues are and what keeps them awake at night. In many cases, if not most cases, we can add value to that corporation by allowing them to come alongside World Vision to do the work that we do.
We can add value to the corporation by allowing them to come alongside World Vision to do the work that we do. Share on XBeyond Donations: How World Vision Empowers Corporations
Let’s put this into shoe leather for people who are reading. I think that 99% of people who are reading think, “The way I could give to World Vision is write a check. I might write a check for $500 or $5,000 or $50,000 and I’ve helped.” That is the giver helping World Vision but now you’re saying World Vision would like to help the corporation or the giver. How can they do that?
In a number of ways. When you sit down with one of our representatives, that first interview, that first discussion is going to be more about you as your company, as a CEO. Again, what keeps you awake at night? What are the issues you’re dealing with facing on a daily basis? We are basically business-to-business salespeople. My folks are purely in the mode of helping businesses grow.
Once we have that interview, we take that information. We line that up with the type of work that World Vision does and we can provide several options in most cases where a CEO can choose which way they might want to engage, which we can do that will most benefit their company. Most often, that starts with a product donation. We are a huge reverse logistics organization. We moved 160,000 plus pallets in 2022. We shipped over 400 containers worldwide. We ship tens of thousands of pallets domestically to help our church partners and our domestic partners to do their ministry.
In that, we have a best-in-class worldwide supply chain that can literally move products from anywhere it is to anywhere in the world with no heartburn and with no concerns on the donor’s part. We handle all of that to take all off that of their plate. We pick up products in as far-flung places as Singapore, Sri Lanka, and Spain. We picked up product in the United Kingdom and we shipped it literally everywhere in the world from Southeast Asia to West Africa, East Africa, Southern Africa, Latin America, and again here domestically among our network of affiliate partners.
You don’t have to reveal the source of the place that we were touring together and I don’t think we need to unless you want to. We’re touring in this very large, probably 30,000 square foot warehouse and we’re passing bathroom vanities, bicycles, diapers, radios and televisions. This is an example of excess inventory or people had a return policy that was whatever. All their pallets of returns are going to World Vision. Tell us what happens when, let’s pretend we make bicycles. I have fifteen bicycles that were returned and I don’t want to fix them. I give them to World Vision. What happens then?
World Vision receives them into one of our several distribution centers nationwide. Fife, Washington, just outside Tacoma, is the one that you toured, Greg. In those facilities, we sort that product. We verify that it is still first quality. In the case of bicycles, we normally have partners that come alongside us. If the bicycle needs any repair, we have people that repair those bicycles to top condition. From there then, we use a pull strategy with our partners.
If the bicycles are going to go internationally, let’s say they’re going to go to Zambia. Our people on the ground in Zambia will tell us the products they need in order to execute the programming that they committed to for the communities they’re working in. Those fifteen bicycles would be requested by Zambia. They will then go on a container as soon as we have enough products to fill a container and it will go on the water for about 45 days over land.
In Zambia’s case, about ten days to arrive at our national office. At that point then, our field personnel will take that product and they’ll put it on in pickup trucks and box trucks. In some cases, they tie it onto the back of a water buffalo, depending on how difficult it is to get to the final destination. We ship that product the last mile to the people who need it most.
Diverse Partnerships: World Vision Solutions For Every Business
If I’m a buyer, a creator or a manufacturer of a product that’s great. What if I run a hotel or create software or I’m a consultant. How can World Vision help me?
We have a number of different ways that we can come alongside. Again, if the desire is to build the brand or to build brand equity among their stakeholders. One of the primary tools that the corporation uses is cause related marketing. We will come alongside them with the program that they can promote to their customers, vendors and stakeholders by which a percentage of those sales will go to the work that World Vision does.
In return for that, we provide reporting on the impact of those donations, which then the corporation generally turns around and communicates to those stakeholders. In one case, we’ve got a major national retailer, thousands of employees and a well-known big box store. We do a quarterly newsletter for them, which is purely for their employees and their other stakeholders. They’re building that employee loyalty. The employees now, as every CEO is aware, employees are looking for connection. They’re looking not just working for a corporation that makes money but a corporation that’s making a difference.
Employees are looking for connection; they want to work for a corporation that's making a difference, not just one that makes money. Share on XWe can provide that type of data, that type of story that will facilitate that for the corporation. That’s one way. We also work in the employee engagement arena. We have a program where corporations if they want to involve their employees and everybody coming back to work after the last couple of years. One of the primary concerns we’re running into is, how do we re-engage our employees? How do we convince them that coming back collegially in a corporate office, in a warehouse or in a headquarters is beneficial, make them comfortable and basically bring them back to the fold?
We have a program that facilitates kit builds for those employees. The corporation invests in a product. It could be school backpacks for domestic distribution. It could be school promise packs for international distribution. It can be women’s hope kits that generally serve women shelters and halfway houses. The corporation invests in that. We ship the product to the site of their designation. We show them how to conduct the get bill. If it’s a larger get bill, one of my people will be there to help facilitate it and tell the story.
It gives the employees a chance to do a hands-on activity that is going to benefit those who are underserved. The most powerful part of that whole process, though, is at the very end after they’ve assembled the kids, they go to a table where we have no cards available. They will write a personal note to the individual who’s going to be receiving that product.
In my experience with World Vision, I’ve traveled the world and the first nations reservations here in the United States. What I find is after that product is long gone, after it’s been consumed and used. That note is still generally pinned to a wall. It is cherished by the people who receive the product. It gives those employees a chance to see that their company is not only in it for profit, but in it for the general good.
We at Convene are very excited about the initial discussions we’re having to do this together, where we serve about 50,000 employees from coast to coast. We are excited about talking about how we can do that together. In the meantime, I just want to say that there was a time when about twenty Convene CEOs went to Cuba with me. We all brought a bicycle to Cuba, and I just want to say that it was very complicated and very hard. Donating excess product inventory to you to send to Cuba, or to you to send Africa, or to you to send to India sounds much easier.
That is what we do. I won’t say it’s easy, but I say that because I don’t have to do that work. We have a full-blown, very robust supply chain that takes care of all of that for us. That’s one of our primary points of differentiation. We do what we say and we say what we do. When we say, we’re going to pick that product up and it’s going to go to whatever country it’s going to go to or whatever city in the United States. It’s going to go there and it will get there with little to no hassle on the donor’s part then we’ll let them know when it arrives.
One of our primary differentiators: We do what we say, and we say what we do. Share on XMaximizing Impact: Tax Benefits And Strategic Giving With World Vision
I know somebody out there is saying, “Do I get a tax receipt for some of this?” Can you talk to that?
We are a qualified 501(c)(3), so any donation. Be it product or cash. It is fully deductible by a corporation. We also are in compliance with the 170(e)(3) IRS code. Which means in terms of product, not only can you take 100% of your value of that product. In some cases, you can take up to double that value under the 170(e)(3) designation. We do that because we don’t serve directly. We serve through partners. Either our international offices or domestic partners.
If somebody out there is saying, “I’m intrigued. I have this corner of my warehouse that has 25 pallets of stuff.” Whatever it might be. What should they do?
Give us a call. I know at the end of this episode, you’re going to talk about our website. Anybody can go to WorldVision.org/corporate, that will take you to our corporate landing site. That gives you the myriad ways that corporations are working with us, including now our newly launched gifts in-kind, a product donation calculator. You can go online, use the calculator and input the data that you have, the value of the product, your current corporate tax rate and logistics charges and all of that.
It will give you options and it will show you the value of donation, versus the value of liquidation or the value of disposal. That’s becoming more important and more critical as disposal costs are climbing every year. We’re finding companies find it much more cost-effective to donate than to even throw things into the landfill.
Again, as we keep this as simple as possible. I know somebody out there thinking, “I have two trucks and they’ve reached 100,000 miles. I put them on Craigslist and I can’t sell them.” Can they call you and you’ll pick them up?
They can call us and we will refer them to an agency that we work with that disposes of that type of real property so they will get a full tax deduction for the value of that vehicle. World Vision will receive the proceeds and we will put it to good use there. As you said early, we operate on 10% or less overhead every year. Ninety percent plus of everything we raise goes directly to field support and to the people who need the resources. We’re very proud of that, but it’s also the benefit of the corporation to know that that’s the fact.
Employee Engagement Reinvented: The Power Of World Vision Kit Builds
We touched on this, but we didn’t talk about it in this particular way that I’d like to talk about it. Let’s say you do a kit build day and you have 10, 20 or 200 employees who are working all together in this assembly line creating women’s health kits or kits for children in another country or whatever the case may be.
It’s not just that they’re doing this thing. It’s that they’re doing this thing for something that everybody has heard of, which is World Vision. If you could announce to your employee team, “We’re going to do something for World Vision together that will help people.” It’s going to take an hour or two hours or ten minutes or whatever. Do you have some stories of what’s happened with companies that have done this?
Yes. Prior to the pandemic, we were doing anywhere from 100 to 200 miles of these kits per year among 200 to 300 to 400 events per year. We’ve got lots of stories in that. I’ve done kit builds with companies as large as Fortune 5 companies. We’ve done kit builds with startup companies. What they have all found, what they come back, most of our donors that utilize kit build will come back. They will do it again. That’s the best testament to the value of the event.
What they find is their teams come together more effectively. They define a more common purpose for the corporation. There’s some fun times, too. I was working with a large financial services company. We did thirteen events in one day scattered throughout the country. In every case, what happened was they held their sales team in a band until the end. They’d run the finance team, the operations team and the other teams through the kit build. They’d end up with probably 30% of the kits that needed to still remain to be built.
They bring in the sales teams and the sales teams would take it as a challenge. What happened in the next round was, the corporation set up a contest among their various teams to incentivize them, excite them and show them the importance of the event and of the work. Again, the real secret sauce in this, though, is the information we can provide to the corporations about the impact of what they’ve done. It’s not just a one-and-done situation. We want you to know that what you’ve done is meaningful, both the World Vision but also the people we serve.
The real secret sauce is the information we can provide to corporations about the impact of what they've done. Share on XIt seems like it’s very clear in team building that doing something together as one is important. We can all go out and go bowling or take a hike in the hill behind the office together or go for drinks after dinner or after work. When you get 5, 10, 20, or 200 people together and they’re doing something for people that are needy. I bet you have a lot of pride on your team to be able to create moments like that all over the country.
It’s what we live for. We’re a relational bunch. We thrive on it. In our world, we are the one team of World Vision that is firmly planted in the secular world. For us, the ability to work with a secular corporation, we don’t know what the beliefs are. We don’t know what the values are of the individuals, but we show up as the hands, the feet and the face of Christ showing those individuals Christ love and what it will do throughout the world. Whether they’re believers or not, they are impacted by it. They feel it and we see a change. We do see a change in the companies. We see a change in the employee portion. Many of those employees have gone on to become donors of World Vision directly because of the impact that we’ve had on that.
Dignity And Hope: World Vision’s Local And Global Outreach
Helping people is a universal language of love and it doesn’t have to be that somebody is a Christian. They could be of any particular faith. We’re allowing them to “bring their faith to work” and help their fellow men and women who are needy. Let’s go back to the warehouse. You have a number of warehouses all across the country. In the case of excess product, it’s stacked up to the ceiling in very huge warehouses.
The way it’s distributed is not always international like we talked about putting on water for ten days arriving in Africa or China or the Philippines or whatever. I remember some vehicles from local churches that were lined up outside the door of your warehouses ready to receive things that their churchgoers or their people who were just needy and hanging around the church needed something. Talk about that for a second because that was pretty cool.
We have a division within our organization. Their role within World Vision is to work with the American church and reignite the American church. Our role in working with US programs is to provide the fuel that then they use to connect and provide much needed resources to various churches. Again, much like our work with donors, our work with churches involves all stripes and all the nominations. There are over 50 denominations represented in World Vision just as employees. We work with more than that in the field.
What we are is the supply chain, the national supply chain for the American church movement as they improve and increase their ministry within their communities. We’re not engaged in direct service with those individuals. We work with those church partners who then provide those needed resources and it takes all forms. It’s homeless, gospel missions, women’s shelters and birthing clinics. Basically, if you can think of it, we’re probably doing that work. First Nations work is a very important part of our work here in the United States.
We have a large boat brand on the Navajo reservation. We’re working on Pine Ridge, Rosebud, Wind River, and the Yakama reservation providing those people with the resources. They’re not market participants, so we provide resources that they otherwise could not obtain. On the Navajo reservation, we’re involved in rebuilding their homes. The Bennett Freeze, if you want to look that up. You can look that up.
It was a sad period in US history from about 1965 until 2008, where the Navajo Nation was not allowed to improve any of their infrastructure. Following 2008, we entered the reservation. We started providing the resources they needed. Everything from Kohler, toilets to certainty shingles to gypsum and sheetrock. Everything they need to build those homes. Again, having a huge impact domestically.
I remember a video. I don’t know if you still have it up, but it was a video on your website that was in Chicago. There was a particular person who had a very difficult environment in her home in Chicago. It had to do with vanity and a sink that worked and a toilet that didn’t work and whatever. All of a sudden, she has a sink and a mirror. If you think about it, if your sink doesn’t work and you can’t see to fix your hair in the morning. It’s not a great day. You guys provided new things in this home, in this apartment and the smiles were pretty big.
That video is still there. The impact that we have on those individual’s lives is hard to fathom. Those of us who are market participants, if we need a new toilet or new mirror or new clothing. We just go to the store and we get what we need. Some of these people don’t have that option. We give them that alternative, which then helps start lifting them out of that situation that they’re in.
One of our catch phrases is, we offer a hand up, not a handout. Everything we do is about lifting people out of poverty. Not necessarily making them reliant on us but giving them the opportunity to live themselves up so that they can become market participants. They can have jobs. They can participate in society again. We’re opening those doors for them is our belief.
We offer a hand up, not a handout. Share on XPartnering for Good: How To Connect With World Vision
When you return dignity to somebody, which is what you’re doing. You give them value as a person and ultimately, you give them hope for their future. Those are powerful things to do, dignity, value as a person and hope for the future. World Vision is doing that through corporate engagements. It’s very exciting.
Imagine that there’s somebody reading that has that corner of their warehouse. They make things and they’re sitting there with excess inventory wondering, “What should I do with it? Should I put it all in the trash a little bit?” Maybe they have a lot and imagine that that could be given to World Vision to help somebody and return dignity, value, and hope and they end up with a tax receipt. It’s a great deal for everybody. We’re going to put up the World Vision logo. It’s WorldVision.org/corporate. Remind our readers again, what somebody would do if they’re interested. Also, address the fact that somebody might think, “I’m too small to participate.” How can they ascertain? Are they big enough?
Everybody is big enough. We have very few restrictions on what we can pick up. The primary restriction is the volume, as you said. If somebody has a product that we need for our programming, we may not show up with a box truck to pick it up. We can send them UPS or FedEx labels that direct the product where it needs to go. Literally, we work with over 400 corporations every year. It rotates. Some years, we work with some.
Other years, we work with others, but those companies represent everything from a small startup less than $500,000 in sales. As I said earlier, up to Fortune 5 companies like McKesson and Cardinal Health. We are not concerned about the size of the corporation. We’re concerned about the value of the product, the donation and what we can do to help that corporation grow.
Larry Noble of World Vision, Corporate Engagement, and National Director. Thank you so much. I’m praying that there’s going to be a lot of people who’ve never heard of you who will now be calling you up or clicking on WorldVision.org/corporate and figuring out how you can help them.
Give us a call. To use the marketing phrase, “There’s no obligation.” If there’s no alignment, we’re still friends. We still pray together. We’re looking for that alignment. We’re looking for that win-win situation. If it can’t create that, then we’ll just harness friends and look for the next opportunity.
There you go. Perish the thought, there may be somebody reading who hasn’t heard of Convene. Check out ConveneNow.com. We’re Christian CEOs and leaders helping each other to build better businesses, better families, profitable businesses and excellent businesses all on a Biblical platform. We will see you in the next episode.
Thank you, Greg.
